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For Steve Pougnet, 2015 began on a great note. Palm Springs had pulled itself out of the worst recession since the Great Depression and better than most cities in the region. The rebuilding of downtown was finally approaching. He’d made plans to run for a third term as mayor.

But when questions arose that spring about his relationship with a developer, Richard Meaney, Pougnet obfuscated, lashed out, admitted some fault, and largely disappeared from public view. In December — three months after an FBI-led raid on City Hall — he stepped down from the council with a dark cloud over his head.

"I am certainly far from perfect," he later told The Desert Sun, "but I have no regrets on how I have led [Palm Springs] for the last eight years.”

A real estate agent, Pougnet joined the council in 2003 and rose quickly in local Democratic circles. After becoming mayor in 2007 with 70 percent of the vote, he championed a program that encouraged hotels to remodel in exchange for a tax rebate. He also pushed for the creation of a sustainability commission and became a prominent voice in the preservation of Chino Cone, a pristine land formation on the northern end of the city.

Through it all, he became the city's biggest cheerleader, earning a reputation as friendly to businesses, tourists and LGBT people. In 2008, Pougnet married his partner, Christopher Green, at City Hall and seemed to relish the opportunity to officiate other same-sex weddings during the brief period prior to the passage of Proposition 8.

After an unsuccessful bid for congress in 2010, he focused his attention back on some of the vacant property downtown, which he’d previously threatened to take, and transform, through eminent domain.

This time around, Pougnet found himself allied with developer and property owner John Wessman. The two campaigned for Measure J, a one-percent increase in sales and use tax to help fund redevelopment. Wessman put up more than $95,000 for the “Yes on Measure J” campaign while Harold Matzner, chair of the Palm Springs International Film Festival who later gave Pougnet a fundraising job, put up $52,000.

After the ballot measure passed, the city created an oversight commission for the new fund in response to criticism that the key provisions of the agreement were in Wessman’s favor — a complaint that lingers today.

As 2015 came to a close, Pougnet signaled that he would head back to Colorado, where his husband and children had been living full-time.

The Riverside County District Attorney's Office filed this week a 30-count criminal complaint against Pougnet, stemming from his dealings with Wessman and Meaney, and alleging bribery and public corruption. Wessman and Meaney were also charged.

Jesse Marx covers politics. Reach him at jesse.marx@desertsun.com or @marxjesse on Twitter.